ThingsCon Update: We have a program

Good news! I’m excited to say that we more or less have a program for ThingsCon. I’m mostly copying & pasting this from the current program page, so keep an eye on the actual program page.

Also, now is the perfect time to get one of the very few available discounted early bird tickets!

So here goes!

Day 1

Day 1 is dedicated to in-depth workshops (either 2h or 4h long) and hands-on sessions. Dive deep into topics you want to learn more about and get some actuall hands-on experience.In parallel, Hardware Day Berlin takes place across town, so you can choose between a wide range of meetups, pitches, lunches, and other satellite events outside the conference, too.

We’re still building the workshop day program. Give us another few days.

Day 2

Day 2 features a wide range of talks, presentations and conversations and will take place at the conference venue from about 9:30 until 18:00, followed by a party. Please note that this is a draft: Some slots are likely to still change, and we’ll add details as soon as we have them.

We’ll have two stages full of program running in parallel.

9:30 – 11:00 Opening (Stage 1 exclusive)

Stage 1: Kickoff session

Opening keynote: Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (Good Night Lamp)

Brady Forrest (Highway1)

Coffee break

11:30 – 13:00

Stage 1: Founders Stories

Building a company is a personal journey – we’ll invite experienced hardware entrepreneurs to take a look back at the path they’ve come and share their individual insights and learnings – and discuss the challenges they faced along the way. These sessions are both very personal and highly interactive, giving you the chance to discuss the pressing issues that kept you awake all night. Chance are, they’ve been there.

Gavin Dapper (Phonebloks)

Olivier Mével (23 de Enero)

Matt Biddulph (Product Club)

Stage 2: Funding your business

Today, there are more ways to fund a company than ever before: from bootstrapping to accelerating to venture capital, all the way to crowd funding (or crowd investing even): We’ll take a deep dive into what it takes to fund a hardware business. Talk about when running a Kickstarter makes sense and when it doesn’t. We’ll explore various strategies and shed some light on interesting ways of funding.

Beth Koby (Technology Will Save Us)

TBA

Panel discussion: Beth Koby, Brady Forrest, TBA

Lunch break

14:30 – 16:00pm

Stage 1: Design

There are many ways to describe the conception of building a hardware product: Product design, open design, or service design, are just some of them. In this session, we’ll explore the challenges and opportunities of design against the backdrop of connected devices and hardware in general – we’ll and take a look at unconventional takes on designing a delightful experience around your hardware or connected devices.

Louisa Heinrich

Alasdair Allen

Rachel Rayns (Raspberry Pi)

Stage 2: Ethics & Sustainability

We all love our gadgets, and many of us are in the business of designing and producing them, too. Together with some of the pioneers in the field, let’s have a look at how sustainability and ethical considerations affect production. What’s possible today, what are the challenges and pitfalls to avoid? And how can we work towards more ethical and sustainable production while producing competitive, delightful products?

Miquel Ballester(Fairphone)

Jessi Baker (Provenance)

Panel discussion: Gawin Dapper, Jessi Baker, Miquel Ballester

Coffee break

16:30 – 17:30

Stage 1: Founders Stories

Building a company is a personal journey – we’ll invite experienced hardware entrepreneurs to take a look back at the path they’ve come and share their individual insights and learnings – and discuss the challenges they faced along the way. These sessions are both very personal and highly interactive, giving you the chance to discuss the pressing issues that kept you awake all night. Chance are, they’ve been there.

Matt Webb (BERGCloud)

Emily Brooke (Blaze)

Panel/Interviews: TBA

Stage 2: Open source hardware

Many of technologies that we use today have their roots in open source tech communities. This especially holds true for a new generation of hardware systems and tools. We’ll discuss the potential of Open Source Hardware, how to build your company around it, how to integrate open design principles into your own product, and show you promising new open source business models.